CS2 removes iconic weapon animaton and no one knows why

In a Counter-Strike 2 update on December 18, Valve quietly changed a number of weapon animations, but in the fray, an iconic animation was removed.

Update, December 20: A day after the update went live, Valve has brought back the rare Deagle animation.

Valve called it a “regression”, writing in the patch notes: “Fixed a regression with the rare Desert Eagle inspect animation.”

Additionally, they increased the rarity of the new rare AK-47 inspect animation, which you can see below too.

Original article continues:

Since the days of CS:GO, it’s been possible to inspect your gun and knife by pressing the F key. This will play a short animation where your player model takes a good look at your skin.

Numerous weapons actually have two inspect animations, one that plays most of the time, and another “rare” animation that will play typically one in every ten inspects.

One such example is the Desert Eagle, with its rare inspect showing the player spinning it around their index finger indefinitely, as long as the inspect key is held down.

Rare Deagle inspect removed from CS2 – but why?

However, as of the December 18 update, animation was gone, with only the regular Deagle inspect showing every time.

Players have been left bemused by this change – if it is indeed a change, and not a mistake.

“Such an iconic animation,” one player commented, with a sad face emoji. “Unplayable,” another joked. The rare Deagle inspect was added in 2018, so it’s been a staple for over six years.

Some are holding on to hope that its removal is just a bug that Valve will put right in a future update, and I certainly can’t think of any actual reason that they would want to remove it. After all, there are many other ‘spinny’ animations, such as with the Talon and Butterfly knives.

Speaking of other animations, some new ones were added, notably, a new rare inspect for the AK-47, although this one is dividing opinion, with one popular post calling it “goofy.”

And in terms of objective improvements to animations, Valve finally fixed the bug with the M9 Bayonet inspect, which, since the knife was first added, had the player’s thumb glitching through the handle.

The update also included other gameplay changes, such as how explosions throw around dropped weapons, fixes to the Train map, and map guides being supported in the Steam workshop. You can read the full patch notes here.